


wishing for the earth

by Shampain



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shampain/pseuds/Shampain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Staring at the quiet lights of Lake-town, the terror threatens to overtake her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wishing for the earth

**Author's Note:**

> Teeny little drabble with a billion commas, I just couldn't help myself.

It was just another day. She's had many of them, at least compared to the race of men, but she wouldn't really know. She sticks to her own kind, as is expected, and preferred (though, perhaps, not by her). The woods are in need of cleansing and she readies herself, strapping on daggers and quiver, pausing for a moment to bask in the light of the sun. Her hand flexes around the arch of her bow, fingers twitching with the urge to pull taut the bowstring. 

She heads out into the woods, Legolas at her side. A routine extermination, clearing the spider nests away. She fears nothing, not death or anguish or loss. She isn't even aware that fear exists. Not yet.

Tauriel knows that you cannot own another soul, not really, as one cannot own a star or a memory. But when faced with the possibility of it winking out that doesn't seem to matter. Staring at the quiet lights of Lake-town, the terror threatens to overtake her. 

*

Tauriel runs, because she loves it. It is pure freedom to twist and leap her way through the trees, all of Mirkwood laid out before her. The forest was sick, something which both saddened and thrilled her. She is reckless, and she loves danger. (She is all of 600 years, and has not the tempering wisdom of her elders.) She has never lost a fight. She is invincible. She will never die.

She cannot run within the walls of the palace. Instead she walks, slow and stately, itching to throw off invisible reins. The prisoners are in their cells, and though she isn't the keeper of the keys she feels responsible. When she walks down the stairs, she is descending into a prison of her own.

The sound of the stone striking the floor reminds her uncannily of an arrow sinking home, and she cannot imagine why. Not yet, anyway. A rune stone, smooth, warmed by his body, as it had undoubtedly been tucked away in a pocket or a pouch. Beautiful, simple, not unnatural; strangely foreign. 

She hates convention, and rules, and caution. She likes him. She gives him back the stone. His voice paints a target on her heart.

*

Tauriel does not sleep but looks to the stars. The world shifts restlessly underneath her feet and she longs to part from it, to drift up into the sky. What she does not realize is that she is up there already; and instead the agony is in reaching down below, wishing for the earth. She does not know this until it is too late.

Their hands touch. A fleeting moment, but single and silver like a star flaring to life, out in the void. "I am right here," she wants to tell him. But she isn't, so she doesn't. She is far away, looking down at something she cannot hold, even though the warmth from his hand, still fever hot, is a kiss of dragon's breath against her own.

But he lives, and so does she.


End file.
